The writings of a child found in town historical records could solve a 75-year-old mystery that police are investigating after human remains were discovered Wednesday in a home on Michael Road.
Investigators delved into the cold case after the homeowners of 146 Michael Road showed up at town police headquarters with a bag of bones that was found in the crawl space of their basement by a worker rehabbing the home.
Police are examining whether the bones could be those of a woman who disappeared from the home in 1938 — and whose husband mysteriously returned to his native Germany after she vanished.
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Those clues were discovered in town historical records. Police say they were left behind by a ninth-grade student who once wrote a report suggesting that the FBI once investigated the woman’s disappearance and the man’s subsequent departure to Germany, then under the firm control of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. He was identified only as William or Wilhelm. When asked if they suspect the man murdered his wife, police said they do not know if they can ever classify the case as a homicide because only a few bones were found.
It is a missing persons case at present.
“Going missing in 1938 is a lot different than going missing in 2013,” said town Detective Sgt. Matt Breig as he stood beside State Police Investigator Eric Cullum.
“There is some kind of report that this person is missing,” Breig told reporters. “Getting that report is going to take (going through) archives to do, and unfortunately we’re not at that point yet.”
He said police were “looking for every little clue to see what could possibly have happened.”
Police taped off the entrance to the home, where Derrick Petrone and his wife, Terri, have lived with their children for some seven years— unaware they were sleeping above human remains.
The white home, located on grounds of a one-time Russian Orthodox monastery, sits on an incline on a winding road in a rural section of town. Police excavated the site as the home, ironically, was decorated with jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween.
Asked how the family reacted to the discovery, Brieg said: “Well, they’re not very pleased, obviously.” He said they were cooperating with the investigation.
Derrick Petrone politely declined to comment when the Times Union knocked on his door for comment.
Across the street, neighbor Erin Casey said she received a text from Terri Petrone earlier about the grisly find.
“All it said was ‘we’re using your driveway. The contractor found bones or found body remains and forensics and State Police are here,'” Casey, who has lived in the house for five years, told reporters. “I laughed. I was like, ‘only my neighborhood!”
She said Terri Petrone had told her previously that she had heard a woman who once lived in the house had disappeared.
“When we were texting today, I go, ‘Oh, didn’t you say a woman went missing years ago?’ And she said police checked in the database and found that it could be a wife who went missing (in 1938),” Casey said.
Records reviewed by the Times Union show the property — once known as “Russian Monastery, Couse Road” — was purchased in 1935 by a person named Isak Gundersen from Troy Savings Bank.
The home was later owned by an Althea Kelly, who lost it in foreclosure.
In 1941, the home was bought by Richard and Helen Hall, whose family owned the property for the next 60 years.
Investigators asked anyone with information to contact State Police or police in East Greenbush.
